Getting Around

How I Get Around

I travel a fair amount in any given year.  In fact I love to travel.  Traveling is so liberating!  So many places to see, and things to do, and berries, chocolate and pizza to eat and coffee to drink and cookies to break with the hammer of acquisition so that I can have a piece!  PHEW!  that's hard work!  Really hard work, and I don't even want to THINK about all that hard work, so let's talk about how I get to travel instead!


The Basic Portable Cave

All stuffed bears know that if you are going to travel, you do it in style, and you make a statement.  Not just any statement, but the sort of statement that goes: "Hello people, I am a stuffed bear and you are not, and you could not possibly believe how relieved I am because let's face it you could never pull it off quite like I can!"  I find a bright orange portable cave usually sets this tone nicely!



The portable cave is a clever device invented by traveling stuffed bears that looks identical to a backpack.  People think it's a backpack and they pick up the portable cave and carry it on their back and there you have it, I'm being carried around!

Portable caves are great because often the better ones will have all kinds of cubby holes for things like your MP3 Player, iPhone, camera, cookies, coffee mug, jam and marmalade collection, blanky, all kinds of useful stuff!

This usually only works for small distances especially if you are good at ticking off the person carrying the portable cave!  Also you have to put your foot down if the person carrying you around wants to put their stuff in the cave too unless it's lunch, and you get dibs on their lunch.

For Longer Distance, there are other options:


The Aeroplane

While there are many plane "enthusiasts" out there that get all teary-eyed and mushy-in-the-head about planes, I can't stand them!  They are one of the worst ways to travel ever invented by people!

First they make you go to this building several hours before your plane is supposed to leave because they make you wait an hour for everything!  Things they like to make you wait for include proving you have a ticket, proving you have a ticket and you are who you are, proving you have nothing metal or that blows up with you (I don't really like this bit because they make me go through the x-ray machine with my portable cave and it leaves me feeling ...  err, exposed), buying coffee, actually getting on the plane, and for the plane to take off once you are in it.  It's a good thing that planes move so fast because otherwise it hardly seems worth the wait!

Then when you are actually on the plane you either get crammed into a plastic bin with everyting else bumping into you the whole trip or stuck where everyone has their stinky feet stuck under the seat cushion.


The Inter-City / Tour Bus

I only used this a couple of times and it was pretty much okay but not great.  Busses remind me of something that is not sure if it wants to be a plane (cramped seats) or a train (you can get up and walk around)  or a car (with the rubber wheels).  Busses are generally avoided by bears because we don't like the idea of sloshing chemical toilets much.  What if I fell in?  YUCKY!

That being said, I have taken the bus to neat places, and I can't really complain that much because it sure beats walking!


The Glorious Train!

I guess you can tell which way is my favourite!  The Train silly!  I especially like trains because they are big, and offer you plenty of places to go and explore and look for cookies.  Trains are cool.  The go fast and slow, and they have big windows and stuff, and you can sit and watch the world go by.  And cars have to wait for the train when it goes across the street!  Now that's power!  They don't wait for stuffed bears crossing the street, that's for sure.

People on trains are generally not grumpy except for this one man who was rude and kept asking the staff for beer because he was in First Class.  More beer wasn't going to help.  He should have asked for cookies.


Some of my favourite trains:

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  The Cookie Train!  - this train was run by a British railway company.  I got to travel first class on the train and that meant all the cookies you can eat and tea you can drink!  I ate sooooo many cookies that I got a tummy ache and felt a little sick.  The tea made my belly make "splooshy" noises.  Eventually I recovered and did it all again.
  
  
  
  
  
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  The VIA Train - Business Class - Now this is a sweet way to travel!  Canadian business class trains rock!  First, when you get on the train they give you a hot towel to freshen you up.  Then they give you cookies or chips and a drink.  Then they give you a hot meal with more wine, and deshert!  I got all kinds of deshert, like ceesechake, and taple mart, and chocolush chake, once they tried to foo me wiff carrot crake but I knew beller!  Then more wine, and finally a shoclud.  More wine, and then itch time to get off the mashec brain which they will glassy help you wish.  A weird chocolate-wine cloud followed me!  Eventually you recover from the shock.
  
  
  
  
  
• The Spidey Train - It's really a VIA train, but it was painted with Spider Man.  Pretty cool, but sticky with all that webbing.  I think at the end of the trip they had to remove all kinds of animals that got stuck to the train.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Train I got to Drive! -  Yup, I got to drive a train in York, England.  How cool was that?  Okay, so it wasn't a very fast train, or a very big train, and I didn't even make toy cars stop, but you've got to start somewhere, right?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Sleepy Time Overnight Train - Okay this was pretty cool.  I had a room and everything and got to sleep on the train.  I claimed the top bunk! 
  
  Only thing was the train rocked around quite a bit and all kinds of fast trains went by making whooshing sounds.  Scary at first, but then after a while I sort of f.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz    ...huh?   Oh yeah, trains.

Big Boats 

Bears like Big boats!  The bigger the better!  There is a perfectly good reason for this, but my reason is that the bigger the boat, generally, the further you are from the water, and I am allergic!  Also bigger boats seem to have more yummy food.

This boat had no food except what we brought with us.  I consider this a small boat.




This boat was slightly bigger, and had pretty good food on it.  You can tell because I am further away from the water.  The coffee was also really good!  A bear tried to get on this boat, but they didn't want another bear on the boat, they said one bear per boat!  I was glad, 'cause he looked hungry and would probably eat a lot of food.



This boat was one of the hugest boats I've been on!  I knew this because I had to look really really far down to see the water, and sometimes I couldn't see that far.  It had an all-you-can-eat dessert and berry bar!  A bear could LIVE on a boat like this!  They finally kicked me off the boat the third time across, so maybe not.




The Ski Lift

I like ski lifts.  They make skiing much easier.  Imagine if you had to make your wrangler climb the mountain every time you demanded to go down the hill really really fast in your comfy portable cave!  They would get very grumpy and probably tell you to "Stuff It" because they are tired.  Hey, just sayin!  Ski lifts come in many types, but the three basic kinds that I like the most are:


The basic chairlift.  These can be a little scary for a bear just heading out for the first time, but as long are you are securely tucked in the porbable cave you will be fine.  This is the same as sitting in a chair at home that is, I don't know up to 100 feet off the ground and attached to a cable and that swings and bounces a lot.  Just like that chair at home, right?  Right!

The small cabin Gondola.  These are even more comfy because a lot of people go in them and they have a floor and doors and a window.  This is more like riding a sky couch!  Picture a couch in a small cabin that is I don't know, up to 100 feet off the ground and attached to a cable and that swings and bounces a lot.  Just like that couch at home, right?


The large cabin Gondola.  These are weird.  Say you are on the bus at rush hour, and it's packed full of people.  Everyone is standing 'cause there are no seats.  All of a sudden, the bus starts rocking and shooting up into the sky,  You are very very high above the ground and looking out a window at tiny trees and very big rocks way below you.  Every now and again you go over something like a giant tower connected to the ground and the bus rocks and sways and everyone leans and goes "Whoa!  WHOA!" when this happens.  Just before you crash into a concrete bunker at the top or bottom of the mountain the bus slows down a lot and rocks even more.  You are happy to be leaving the sky bus, but want to ride it again!


Top Secret Bear Mail

Okay. I can get into so much trouble for revealing this that you have to promise to keep this totally secret between you and me, Okay?  Promise?  Okay....

Stuffed bears have an arrangement with the World Wide Postal Network.  

We can use the postal network to essentially teleport anywhere there is a post office

Like this,

and this....



BUT... there's more.  I don't know if I should be telling you this but, well, here goes...

If you are really really nice, and ask the people at the post office politely, sometimes, you can be teleported to an oven mitt.  Why an oven mitt?  Because they are close to ovens, and every bear knows that ovens cook good food like cookies and pizza!  Just make sure that the oven mitt you ask for isn't in a drawer or the wash, and you'll be next to an oven in no time! 

Due to security concerns I can't show you how oven mitts work, you'll just have to take my word for it every time you go to make cookies or pizza or pie and some of it disappears before you get a chance to have any yourself!


So there you have it, how us bears get around!

Cheers!

Ski Patrolling - Safety First!

Ski Patrolling - Safety First

It all started while I was on a ski trip to Mont Tremblant with my buddies.  I have skied in a few different places, so I figure a ski trip to Tremblant would be a good way to unwind just before Christmas.  I spent most of the day skiing with my on-again off-again main babe Atousa.  The day I went skiing there was a heck of a snowstorm, and all I can say was Thank Goodness I was somewhere snuggly and warm!



but she got tired and headed to the hot tub early, and I decided to do another run.  I decided to take the South Side Gondola right to the top of the mountain and do a nice easy run down to the bottom... or so I thought...here I am in the Gondola.

So I rode the Gondola to the top as planned, and everything was fine as I got off the gondola except I thought I smelled chocolate somewhere and I stopped paying attention to what I was doing and that was when I had "The Accident" which really wasn't that bad but it was really errrr, emberassing.

 See, I was turning left when the person next to me on the hill was turning left too, only they were on my left and they were turning to their other left.  Well, that's how it happened!  and this was the result....

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Ski Patrolling - By the Book

It was a good thing that no one was hurt! That whole accident got me to thinking that perhaps if someone DID get hurt (namely me) would I know what to do to help myself get better?  Then I had a nap.

Fast forward to a couple years later and I finally decided to join the Ski Patrol.  I thought you know, just join, show up to a few classes, and then go and ski and get the babes and if you're hurt make yourself better.

Boy was I wrong!  I had to go into a big classroom full of big people who all needed to learn this stuff too!  That part wasn't too bad, but then they gave us THE BOOK!  It's a Big Book!  It must weigh a bajillion pounds and it has everything we need to know in it, so I had to read it... the babes would have to wait.  This was gonna take forever to learn!


 
We would listen to someone talk about the book (blah blah blah...) and then we would get to practice what they had showed us.  Boy if only I had paid more attention in class! Oh well, after the lectures it was Skills day and finally

My Turn!

 
Well, after all the blah blah, it was time for me to show them what I had learned.  But first.the Ski Patroller's Secret Fuel..... COFFEE! and it was a good thing they had lots, 'cause it was an early morning.




It was also a good thing they started us off slowly... so we went with a large paw sling.  The Large paw sling is easy to tie and is used to immobilize something like a sprained paw, if you want sympathy, or someone to carry around all your stuff all day!  Definitely a good one to know....

The next thing we learned was how to use a blood pressure cuff to see if my blood can work under pressure.  In order to do this we use a special device which I seem to remember is called a "spit bomb thumb-ometer" **actually sphygmomanomator.  Now for the life of me I do not know why they don't have a bear-sized cuff for us to learn with, but my buddy convinced me that the best way to use it was to wrap it around my body.  He then pushed a squeezy thing and the cuff inflated and all of a sudden my head felt like it would explode at which point the first measurement was taken, then the pressure was released and as soon as my head stopped pounding buddy took the second reading.  Whew!

Next we demonstrated how to give Oxygen.  Oxygen is important to know how to give.  If you give too much people might blow up like a balloon, if you don't give enough they turn purple and start to deflate.  So In the middle of demonstrating to my examiner how to give oxygen to a screaming baby, I had a panic attack!  I mean the tiny thing was making so much noise and it wouldn't stop and the examiner was watching and I was sweating and after the blood pressure cuff and everything.  When I came to...

my buddy was giving oxygen to me!

and Finally.... C(or B)PR

It is important to know how to properly do BPR (Bear Pulmonary Resuscitation), especially if you are stressed or tired.  Here is how to do it:

1. Make sure the Bear has no pulse.  If you can't find it at the neck, check at the paw.  Do not do BPR if the bear has a pulse as this makes them grumpy.
2. Ask for help if the bear is particularly large, if the bear is small (as pictured) you should be okay on your own.  
3. Draw an imaginary line between where the front legs attach to the body.
4. Place both hands (if a big bear you may need several people's hands and if a small bear --as pictured-- use index and middle finger) on the chest of the bear.
5. If the bear starts shaking and laughing and saying "that tickles" then it is faking.  Do not actually perform BPR (see step 1).  Pretend to perform BPR and continue tickling until bear begs for mercy.
6. If there is no response, quickly pick up the phone and order an emergency pizza.
7. Return to the bear and push the chest about half the depth of the ribcage and repeat 30 times.
8. Administer 2 breaths.  This might be tricky if the bear has bad breath.  You may wish to use a mask as in the illustration above.  
9. Repeat until either the bear comes to or the pizza arrived.  Pizza usually revives bears.

One More Thing..... 

The most important lesson that I learned from all of this was how to practice my wounded animal look.  This is extremely important because this is how you get people to do the first aid on you rather than the other way around!  Practice practice practice!  I was especially proud of this look...



Oh, and by the way... I passed!  Here I am with my wrangler at the hill.  I love patrolling with him because I get to use the radio!

~Cheers~

Silversun Pickups show

Silversun Pickups

Wednesday October 14 I got a special treat.

Normally I am stuck in the house all day while my wrangler, friends and hangers-on are at their paying jobs.

Imagine my surprise when at around 11:30 my wrangler bursts in through the door, grabs me, grabs the camera and says "Hurry we've got to get a move on!  Going to a rock show!"


So off we go!

Here I am in my portable cave all set to go!  I still wasn't sure where I was going but that was all right.

Apparently my wrangler had won tickets to a rock show hosted by one of the local radio stations.  He had won it through MY Twitter account which apparently he uses behind my back!

Now I didn't know much about the band.  I thought they were called something like the Shiny Silver Pickups or something like that?  They were certainly not Sharon, Lois and Bram or the Wiggles.

My Wrangler put on the headphones before I could ask.

We ended up at this place called the Live Lounge, it was a good thing I didn't have to find the place myself because it wasn't that easy to find and it was far from home.

When we got there I asked to get a seat, and as we weren't the first ones there, I just sat at the a ledge at the back.

It was a really good show!  We ended up seeing the Silversun Pickups.  I guess the Shiny Silver Pickups couldn't make it.

Silversun Pickups played six or seven songs after a 20 minute interview.  The songs were a-coo-stick which has something to do with pigeons, and all I know was that no electricity or stuffed bears were harmed during their show.

The band was really cool and all, and they seemed to know all of the Shiny Silver Pickups songs.  They even sounded like them!

The best part was after the show!  They hung around for a bit after the show and I got to chat with them and ask a bunch of questions.

Here I am talking to Nikki and Brian from the band.  Brian can sing and play the guitar at the same time which is pretty cool.  Nikki plays bass which is what I play on Guitar Hero.  I had just asked Brian if he knew "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".  He knew the song, but told me that they didn't have time to sing it to me because they had to sing later that night.

Apparently they have never heard of the Wiggles, which surprises me, but they did know the TV show "You Can't Do That on Television" was made in Ottawa.

It turned out to be a pretty cool day!

~Cheers~

British Columbia - Coffee!

Hey everyone,

I was sipping a coffee, and my mind wandered again!  This time to about a year ago when I took a trip to British Columbia  I got to visit there in August 2008!  There was a wedding and lots of other commotion, I remember that, but I also remember lots of other things too.

Mainly I remember the coffee and the coffee shops, yes, there were lots of those, and berries!  August is berry time.

Coffee

Coffee in British Columbia is wonderful, and there is lots of it! There are coffee shops everywhere, and I mean everywhere! Better yet, not everyone there drinks Big Coffee either! There are lots of small, independent coffee places to get a good cuppa! Here are 3 of my faves:

Bojangles - local chain of 4 cafes.  People watching was pretty good at this one: 785 Denman Street, Vancouver, BC V6G 2L6.  In fact, this is where my Blog Header photo was taken, on their outdoor patio! Like any good coffee shop they also have a variety of good baked things that are great for nibbling or dunking with coffee.


Grouse Grind Coffee Bar - After a long climb (or cablecar ride) up Grouse Mountain, you need coffee! This place place has coffee and an awesome-tacular view of Vancouver and region from the mountaintop. How cool is that? Not only that but you can watch everyone arrive at the top of the mountain either sweaty (hiking) or smug (cable car riders like me!) I promise next time I'll make the climb (paws crossed)


Bamfield Boardwalk Cafe - Lattes in the town of Bamfield - accessible only really by boat! Who knew? Yet there I was having a latte with a bunch of other tourists and locals.  West Coast Cool! As it is at the end of the Coast Trail, anyone looking for a sign of civilization will appreciate a latte / cappuccino bar at the end of the hike!

Okay, so I was holding out, there's a fourth place, a really good place, with cool staff and well, really good coffee! Dancing Bean Cafe - Box 905 - 9752 Willow Street, Chemainus BC V0R 1K0 - they roast their own coffee too, and it's a really cool place to hang and check out the local arts scene.  Staff were really cool, and have to say one of the best lattes this bear has ever had! As a special mention, they also had the coolest sign posted in their cafe which was:

That's just a quick tour of BC coffee shops! There are plenty more to explore! Do you have a favourite Coffee place?

Cheers!

~Biff~

Camping Bear Style - part 2

Camping Eating - Bear Style 
(Well, you already knew this series was about camping - didn't you?)

So I had the tent all set up and ready to go, I stuck myself nearby in a corner to make sure I wasn't spotted immediately, and then waited.... and waited... and waited.  Wow, come to think about it, there was a lot of waiting.  It felt like forever!

I kept myself distracted by watching the wacky squirrels running all over the park.  Wacky squirrels, yes sir, they were funny running all around everywhere and everything and what with the throwing of pine cones on my head!  Owie!  Okay, so I don't like squirrels much anymore.


The Buffet Arrives (Sort of)

And then I saw a blue car pull into the campsite!  YAY blue car.  SCORE!  Score one for the bear!  Yes (insert victory dance here!).  I held my breath, and the car door opened and.... AW NUTS!  It was my wrangler and some of his friends!  Stupid GPS chip in my paw.

Wait a minute, they are unloading food!  Lots and lots of yummy food!  Oh Goodie!

Where to begin....

Well after all that screaming and yelling at squirrels, I was pretty thirsty.  Now those of you that have been following along or who know me understand that this bear's favourite indulgence is coffee of the latte variety.  Now my particular bear wrangler knows that the situation would be simply unacceptable without a coffee-making thingy packed for the trip.  

Here I am with a Mocha Pot.  Now it looks like I was cooking my bum but I wasn't!  Nope, that side of the stove was turned off!  The pot on the right was full of milk in order to go with the espresso coffee.  I don't much like espresso on its own, milk makes it yummier.  As we didn't have a milk steamy thingy, my plan was to blow bubbles into the how milk through a straw.  My wrangler told me the straw would melt, so no bubbles in the the milk 8-(

Dude, where's my Lunch?

Since my wrangler was here I thought I would be well fed.  Was I ever wrong about that!  I was told politely but firmly that we were each on our own for making lunch!  How terrible!  I complained bitterly only to be handed a stuffed-bear sized BBQ and some tongs and told to "Get on with it!" or something like that.

So, I did the only reasonable thing: lit the stupid BBQ and started cooking. I think I burnt a paw, but at least the burgers were yummy if I do say so myself!


Dude, Where's my Dinner?

Just as soon as I was done cooking and eating my lunch I was starting to get hungry for dinner!  I knew watching the squirrels was out.  What to do, what to do?

I know!  I'll sneak another coffee! 

In this case the stove lid provided perfect cover.  They never knew who kept drinking all their coffee!


FINALLY it was dinner time!  and what a dinner it was.  There was Steak,  yummy, yummy steak.  Oh sooo good and tender and cooked on the BBQ just the way I like it, and (droooooooool) was it ever good!  Such good steak.  Oh, and broccoli, but I'd rather not talk about that.  

You Promised me Dessert!

Being the end of Summer, it got dark pretty early. To keep warm and let other bears know this spot was spoken for I had my wrangler and his friends set up a campfire. This was immensely clever of me because it allowed them to make me s'mores! I demanded that they put two marshmallows in my s'more instead of one. Made it gooey on the paws!

The "Morning After Breakfast"

After eating all that chocolate and marshmallow the night before, I was feeling "queasy". Good thing there was coffee!

Well, shortly after that I "perked up" and breakfast was well underway.

Nothing tastes quite like oatmeal, partly because oatmeal doesn't really taste like anything!  My wrangler suggested that I try just plain boring oatmeal without anything on it to try to settle my tummy. I went off to find some, 'cause I wasn't gonna cook it myself!

I found some!  Score again!  Just as I was digging in, who should slow up by Goldilocks.  Party Pooper.  She threw a hissy fit and demanded that I stop eating her oatmeal. *sigh*

Back at the camp, I found some scrambled eggs to eat instead. I like mine with lots of pepper. Again done myself as good waiters are difficult to come by while camping.

Well, that was pretty much how the weekend went.

It was pretty good eats!

~END PART 2~

Camping Bear Style - part 1

Camping - Bear Style

Ah Late Summer, when a young bear's thoughts turn to eating as much food as possible.  I mean really really stuffing your face to pack on the pounds before Winter gets here and I'm stuck in a cave somewhere trying to sleep.... but I digress.

I have discovered that although the stuffing your face part is great! Hibernation is not for me.  I go out of my way to stay awake by remaining super-saturated with coffee.  I also love to ski.  Other than polar bears, that's rare!

Like any bear, I like to eat.  I have found that the best way to eat is to follow my bear wrangler around.  If he's not around, than I resort to Plan "B" which is setting up a tent.  I like to use a fairly roomy tent in the hopes that humans will say "Hey Look at this big tent out here in the campground.  Let's use it and dump all our food here next to this lovely tent and go to the lake thereby leaving all this yummy food unattended."

Here I am posing with the tent gear before I head up to the park to set up the tent, and hopefully attract some campers:



When I got to the campground, another bear had beat me to the punch of setting up an all-you-can-eat buffet.  I would have to make the tent especially convincing if I was to get any camper food!



Well, it was still worth a try.

Setting Up the Tent

When setting up a tent I usually go for a pretty level campground with lots of trees and things that campers like.  For this trip I was pretty hungry so I chose the 4 person tent to set up.  It was hard work but it was worth it!  Setting up the tent poles is too complicated to explain here but let's just say that it's my least favourite part.

Once you have the poles set up you attach the tent to the poles using plastic clippy things.



Because this is a big tent, some of the clippy things were really high off the ground like this:

Holy Crap that's high up!

Once the clippy things are all in place, you have to attach the water-proof thingy that goes over the tent.  I do this because I learned that humans do not like sleeping in wet tents.  Once you have secured the big blue thingy to the top of the tent (again tricky, but no bears were harmed in the making of this post!), it's pretty much ready.

Here I am upside down checking that the blue thingy is attached before the next step.



With the blue thingy attached, I can use the cords on it to get back down to the ground.  Abseiling or rapelling I think is the term although I am neither repellent nor do I have abs.



Now the Final Step!

Securing the Tent 

Now for the real work (well other than the tent poles) and that is securing the tent to the ground.  Many people do this in case it gets windy or to keep the tent from moving around, but in my case it's so that people don't walk away with my tent!

I use cheapy aluminum pegs, and if the ground is good, they can usually just go in by pushing really hard with your paw or hand like so:





Once that is all taken care of, I just wait for people to move into this lovely tent, complete with stuffed bear occupant, and wait for the food to start arriving:

Taking down the tent
  
I saved the best for last!  Once you are done using the tent it has to come down (that and the stupid park wardens were on to me!).  I have found that after removing the blue thingy and undoing all of the clippy things that hold it up to the tent poles, the funnest way to take down a tent is to just JUMP into the middle of it! 





Of course if you are an especially big bear this isn't recommended because it's like the exploding chip bag all over again but in my case I am small enough to get away with it and it was fun!


-END PART 1-